August 2012 Archive

Every once in a while I get the opportunity to completely immerse myself in one of my client's problems. This time, it was at an IT strategy offsite where a senior director of IT asked me one simple question: "How can we use information technology to help our company open up new streams of revenue?" I found the question refreshing, mainly because nine out of ten CIOs I talk to these days ask the opposite: "how can IT reduce costs?"

Fortunately for me, this client had invited lots of smart people from business and IT and outside experts into the room for two days to explore the revenue question. Challenges familiar to most life sciences companies got folks in the room in the first place: patent expiration foretold eroding profit margins for their blockbuster drugs, and expansion into emerging markets was an avenue for growth, yet one fraught with complexity and uncertain returns.

So this group's charter was to think digital.

Taking inspiration from morning TED talks, four working teams presented ideas for revenue opportunities created by emerging technologies in tech markets like mobile, big data, security, and consumer experiences. The teams cited creative ideas — like algorithms that use public data sources to reduce production forecast variance and improve distribution allocations; modern IT security models, pioneered in financial services, that would enable them to cut the time it takes to on-ramp a new manufacturing partner from months to weeks; company-owned data that could be sold or licensed and made available through public APIs to third parties; and many more.

The teams shared inspiring ideas that were big enough and bold enough to at least warrant further investigation.

In mid-July, my colleagues and I attended Orange’s annual analyst event in Paris. There were no major announcements, but we made several observations:

ORANGE is one of the few carriers with true delivery capabilities. Its global footprint is a real advantage vis-a-vis carrier competitors, in particular in Africa and Asia. At the recent event, Vale, the Brazilian metals and mining corporation, presented a customer case study in which Vale emphasized the importance of ORANGE’s global network infrastructure for its decision to go with ORANGE as UCC and network provider. ORANGE’s global reach positions it well to address the opportunity in emerging markets, both for Western MNCs going into these markets and also to address intra-regional business in Africa and Asia. Another customer case study with the Chinese online retailer 360buy, focusing on a contact center solution, demonstrated ORANGE’s ability to win against local competitors in Asia.